AMERICAN POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT: 1877-1962, COALITION-BUILDING

SERIES:
This is the last in a Series about recent reinterpretations of
major episodes in American Political Development. This Post notes
continuities before and after the Civil War and looks forward to
the whole 1877-1962 period. A later Series will treat episodes
after 1877 individually.

_____________________________________________________________

Political
scientists are rethinking the overall shape of American Political
Development, particularly successive configurations of issues and
parties. This Post reports an important reinterpretation of the
whole period from 1877 until 1962! (Alan Ware 2006. The
Democratic party heads north, 1877-1962. New York NY: Cambridge
University Press, 281 pages.)

Ware
displays much mastery of American subnational politics. He argues
that states and their voters have moved only slowly between
parties, if at all. What really moved were the parties themselves,
probing the country for votes. Ware presents much detail on
successive episodes. This Post reports only his general themes. A
later Series will treat the episodes.

DYNAMICS

Oxford
political scientist Ware does NOT regard 1877-1962 as a separate
“era” in American Political Development. Indeed, his main point is
the remarkable CONTINUITY of American politics, not only within the
1877-1962 period, but also before and after. American politics
“develops,” but only gradually.

“Politics”
here means PARTY politics, and in particular the evolution of the
DEMOCRATIC party.

Party
politics are central because, since the advent of Mass Democracy in
the 1820s, parties have been the main way of organizing American
politics. “How parties related to mass electorates was much the
same in the 1880s as it had been in the 1840s.”
(14)

The
Democratic party requires particular attention because, after the
Civil War and Reconstruction, Democrats faced the problem of
supplementing their main base in the South with at least SOME votes
from the North and/or West. (Republicans had to supplement their
main base in the North, but could do so more easily than could
Democrats.)

HISTORIANS’ main account has been that Democrats were the
majority party before the Civil War and Republicans after the Civil
War (until 1932!), as reflected in how often each party captured
the presidency (very different before and after the Civil
War).

In Ware’s
account, after the Civil War, a few formerly Democratic states
(Maine, Michigan, Pennsylvania) DID shift sharply Republican. But,
contrary to widespread impression, the Civil War did NOT create an
overwhelmingly Republican North.

POLITICAL
SCIENTISTS’ main historical account has been that the USA has had a
succession of significantly different “party systems,” each with
its own distinctive set of issues, parties, and even
voters.

Some
political scientists are now strongly criticizing that classic
“realignment” story. (David R. Mayhew 2002. Electoral
realignments: A critique of an American genre. New Haven CT:
Yale University Press, 174 pages.)

As noted
above, an ALTERNATIVE is to stress continuity. Voters in different
regions continued to prefer either more government or less
government and even to prefer the same parties. What changed most
were parties’ strategic decisions about whom to appeal to, where,
on what basis.

Thus the
core dynamic in Ware’s account is COALITION-BUILDING: putting
together some nationally winning combination from the particular
subnational “building blocks” available to either party. The blocks
themselves changed only slowly over time.

Over the
long run, the result has been a remarkable flip-flop in which the
Democrats, originally appealing mostly to the small-government
South, by the 1960s end up appealing mostly to the big- government
North. Ware’s 2012 book explains how they managed to do that.

Several
factors complicated the Democrats’ coalition-building. First, the
1787 Constitution prescribed an electoral system that tends to
produce two major parties. In a two-party system, winning
coalitions have to be quite broad and therefore quite
heterogenous.

Second, as
the USA admitted new states, the states involved kept changing, in
number, size, and nature of. In the 1800s, Democrats could win a
national majority by coopting only a half-dozen largish states
outside the south. By the 1900s, they needed many more and mostly
smaller states.

Third,
although the socio-spatial base of the Democratic party changed
only slowly, it DID change gradually: with the slow succession of
generations, the arrival of many more immigrants, and the admission
of new states.

LEVELS

The
American political chessboard is MULTI-LEVEL: different
opportunities, constraints, and outcomes at different levels.
Previous accounts have focused on which party won which national
offices, particularly the presidency. Ware looks also at state
governors and even state legislatures.

To win the
presidency, Democrats needed votes in the Electoral College, chosen
by STATE. Outside the South, Democrats had to win about 21% of the
electoral votes in the old North and new West. (Presumably about
the same for capture the Senate, also elected by state.)
(15)

To win a
majority in the House of Representatives – elected from smaller
substate districts – Democrats had to win about 30% of northern
districts. To do that they had to appeal both to their large
southern base and to particular kinds of northerners.
(15)

One of
Ware’s main points is that the Democrats did NOT completely lack
support outside the South. Indeed, even AFTER the Civil War and
Reconstruction, they remained competitive in many northern states
and became competitive in others. (Please see Table
below.)

Accordingly one of Ware’s main themes is that, as before
the Civil War, so also after the Civil War, the Democrats still
had the “building blocks” from which to assemble a nationally
winning coalition. Their real problem was to overcome potential
conflicts between those blocs.

The
following Table shows the great continuity in the Democrats’
subnational bases before and after the Civil War (adapted from
Table 1.1 in Ware 2012, page 12). “Heartland” states are where
Democrats got a strong vote for president (a median plurality of
more than 5% of the total vote).

Note that,
before and after the Civil War, the Democrats’ old heartland states
remained heartland (Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Missouri).
Moreover, “contested” southern and border states in which before
the Civil War the Democrats had been only competitive, after the
Civil War became heartland (Delaware, Louisiana, Georgia, Maryland,
Tennessee, Virginia). Furthermore, states on which there are no
voting data for 1840-1852 turn up in the Democrats’ heartland in
1880-1892 (Florida, South Carolina, Texas). So, after the Civil
War, the Democrats commanded a formidable heartland, mostly in the
South (though they did not completely monopolize the South until
the 1890s when the South again repressed black voting).

Note also
that, after the Civil War, the Democrats remained competitive in
several northern states (Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Ohio).
Meanwhile, they became competitive in several more northern states
(Illinois, Indiana, New Hampshire). The Democrats were also
competitive in two states that were not in the 1840-1852 data
(California and West Virginia). So, after the Civil War, the
Democrats had plenty of states in which they were competitive and
that therefore they could try to add to their southern base in
order to form a nationally winning coalition

Evidently
in the 1850s the issue of slavery was ADDED to previously existing
issues. Once the slavery issue was resolved, the old issues
re-emerged and, with them, many of the earlier state alignments.
(13) So let us turn to issues.

SECTORS

Coalition-building required identifying combinations of
specific IDENTITIES and INTERESTS that were compatible with each
other, or at least that could be made to appear compatible under
the right general IDEOLOGY. Party ideologies were both highly
strategic and deliberately vague.

1800s
parties were still mostly ad hoc national alliances of local
Identities. In the 1990s, Interests also became important building
blocs. But parties could not really use national POLICIES to
recruit new support until the 1930s, when national revenue greatly
increased.

Core
Democratic support came from southern agricultural interests still
favoring small government. Later the same anti-government principle
appealed to Catholic immigrants in North (East) cities, who did not
want moralistic Protestant Republicans to use government to
“improve” them.

Core
Republican support came from northern industrial and commercial
interests, including “eastern” finance. Republicans also retained
the support of “Yankees” (northeast, New England), including those
who settled much of the upper Mid-West as prosperous farmers and
businessmen.

Republican
commitments to business and finance gave Democrats an opportunity
to appeal to West “primary” producers: small farmers and mineral
miners (populists). However, these populists tended to be quite
radical, which alienated other potential Democratic
allies.

Indeed,
Democratic national coalition-building was crippled in 1896, 1900,
and 1904 when populist William Jennings Bryan won the Democratic
nomination for president. In 1912 and 1916, moderate Democrat
Woodrow Wilson won both nomination and presidency (against divided
Republicans).

Because of
“culture war” over drinking between “wet” East and “dry” West,
Wilson could not coop the West permanently. In the 1930s, after
Prohibition, Franklin Roosevelt finally succeeded in doing so. He
also BEGAN to coopt labor in northern cities. But doing so fully
took until 1962.

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韦爱德Edwin A. Winckler (韦爱德) is an American political scientist (Harvard BA, MA, and PhD) who has taught mostly in the sociology departments at Columbia and Harvard. He has been researching China for a half century, publishing books about Taiwan’s political economy (Sharpe, 1988), China’s post-Mao reforms (Rienner, 1999), and China’s population policy (Stanford, 2005, with Susan Greenhalgh). Recently he has begun also explaining American politics to Chinese. So the purpose of this Blog is to call attention to the best American media commentary on current American politics and to relate that to the best recent American academic scholarship on American politics. Winckler’s long-term institutional base remains the Weatherhead East Asian Institute at Columbia University in New York City. However he and his research have now retreated to picturesque rural Central New York.